Pharmakeia: The Merchants' Sorcery Is Not Final

Scripture is quoted from the 1599 Geneva Bible with modernized spelling (words and word order unchanged), with the names Yahweh and Yashua restored throughout.

There's a Greek word in the New Testament that English Bibles translate "witchcraft" and "sorcery." The word is pharmakeia, and you can hear it in English words like pharmacy and pharmaceutical.

Does that mean the Bible condemns your blood pressure pills? No. But it doesn't mean the connection is nothing, either. This is a deep topic, so this article goes slowly. First the words: what pharmakeia meant to the people who spoke Greek, how the Greek Old Testament used it, and what Hebrew word sits behind it. Then the Scriptures where it shows up, especially Revelation 18, where "merchants" and "sorceries" stand side by side. Then the modern record, with every number linked to its source. Last, the balance: Scripture doesn't condemn healing, medicine or physicians. The line it draws is somewhere else.

The words

There are four Greek words in this family:

• pharmakon (φάρμακον): a drug. The standard Greek lexicon, Liddell-Scott-Jones (LSJ), defines it first as "drug, whether healing or noxious," then as "healing remedy, medicine," and also as a poison, a potion, or an enchanted charm (LSJ, φάρμακον). One word covered all of it.
• pharmakeia (φαρμακεία, Strong's G5331): the use of drugs. LSJ gives "use of drugs," especially purgatives; it's even used of abortion-inducing drugs (Soranus 1.59). More generally it means "the use of any kind of drugs, potions, or spells" (Plato, Laws 933b), then "poisoning or witchcraft" (LSJ, φαρμακεία). Thayer's Greek lexicon lists the same three senses: "the use or the administering of drugs," "poisoning," and "sorcery, magical arts, often found in connection with idolatry" (Thayer, G5331).
• pharmakeus (φαρμακεύς, G5332): Strong's defines it as "a druggist ('pharmacist') or poisoner, i.e. (by extension) a magician."
• pharmakos (φάρμακος, G5333): a sorcerer, someone "pertaining to magical arts" (Thayer).

Strong's entry for pharmakeia says it plainly: "medication ('pharmacy'), i.e. (by extension) magic." To a Greek speaker, the drug, the poison, the potion and the spell weren't separate categories. They were one trade.

How the ancients used it

Homer shows the range. In the Odyssey, Helen slips a drug into the wine that "banishes all care, sorrow, and ill humour," so that a man who drinks it "cannot shed a single tear all the rest of the day," even if his own parents die. Where did she get it? From "a woman of Egypt, where there grow all sorts of herbs, some good to put into the mixing bowl and others poisonous" (Odyssey 4, Butler translation). The Greek there is pharmaka: "many good... many baneful" (Odyssey 4.230, cited in LSJ).

In book 10, Circe mixes food and wine for Odysseus' men, "but she drugged it with wicked poisons to make them forget their homes," then turns them into pigs (Homer, Odyssey, Butler translation, Project Gutenberg). LSJ cites that line too: pharmaka lugra, baneful drugs (Odyssey 10.236).

Notice two things. Homer locates the drug trade in Egypt, the same place where Pharaoh's pharmakoi stood against Moses. And the drug's power is to make people forget: forget grief and forget home. Hold onto both.

The early church read the word the same way. The Didache, a church manual from around the end of the first century, lists in one breath: "you shall not practice magic, you shall not practice witchcraft, you shall not murder a child by abortion" (Didache 2, New Advent). The word for witchcraft there is the verb form, pharmakeuseis. Next to it comes the killing of a child, which ancient people did with pharmaka.

The Hebrew behind it: kashaph

The Greek Old Testament, the Septuagint, used pharmak- words to translate the Hebrew family of kashaph (כָּשַׁף, Strong's H3784), "to practise sorcery," and kesheph (H3785), "sorceries." The Brown-Driver-Briggs lexicon notes that kesheph is used literally, and also "figurative of seductive and corrupting influences," of Jezebel and of Nineveh pictured as a harlot (BDB, H3785).

Here's where the Septuagint uses the Greek family, with the Hebrew and the Geneva rendering side by side. The Greek text is linked at Elpenor's Septuagint. Note that some Septuagint verse numbers run one off from English Bibles.

Pharaoh's court. "Then Pharaoh called also for the wise men and sorcerers" (Exodus 7:11). The Septuagint calls them tous pharmakous. Eleven verses later: "And the enchanters of Egypt did likewise with their sorceries: and the heart of Pharaoh was hardened: so that he did not hearken unto them, as Yahweh had said" (Exodus 7:22). In Greek those are pharmakeiais. The first nation in Scripture to field a team of pharmakoi was the empire that enslaved Yahweh's people, and its sorcerers copied Yahweh's signs to keep them enslaved.

The Law. "Thou shalt not suffer a witch to live" (Exodus 22:18). Hebrew mekashshefah; Septuagint pharmakous. And the full list:

"Let none be found among you that maketh his son or his daughter to go through the fire, or that useth witchcraft, or a regarder of times, or a marker of the flying of fowls, or a sorcerer, Or a charmer, or that counselleth with spirits, or a soothsayer, or that asketh counsel at the dead. For all that do such things are abomination unto Yahweh, and because of these abominations Yahweh doth cast them out before thee." (Deuteronomy 18:10–12)

The Septuagint renders "sorcerer" there as pharmakos. Notice the first item on the list: passing children through fire, child sacrifice. The same pairing shows up again in the Didache.

Babylon. Isaiah taunts the empire that trusted its experts:

"But these two things shall come to thee suddenly on one day, the loss of children and widowhood: they shall come upon thee in their perfection, for the multitude of thy divinations, and for the great abundance of thine enchanters." (Isaiah 47:9)

The Septuagint: en tē pharmakeia sou, "in thy pharmakeia." Then: "Stand now among thine enchanters, and in the multitude of thy soothsayers (with whom thou hast wearied thyself from thy youth) if so be thou mayest have profit" (Isaiah 47:12), pollē pharmakeia sou, "thy great pharmakeia." And see who Babylon leans on at the end of the chapter: "Thus shall they serve thee, with whom thou hast wearied thee, even thy merchants from thy youth: every one shall wander to his own quarter: none shall save thee" (Isaiah 47:15). Sorcerers and merchants share one chapter, and neither can save her.

Nineveh. Nahum pictures the capital of Assyria as a harlot:

"Because of the multitude of the fornications of the harlot that is beautiful, and is a mistress of witchcraft, and selleth the people through her whoredom, and the nations through her witchcrafts." (Nahum 3:4)

In the Septuagint she's hēgoumenē pharmakōn, "mistress of drugs," and she sells peoples en tois pharmakois autēs, "by her drugs" (Blue Letter Bible, LXX Nahum 3:4). She sells nations with pharmaka. That's commerce and sorcery in one verse, hundreds of years before Revelation.

Malachi. Yahweh promises to come near in judgment:

"And I will come near to you to judgment, and I will be a swift witness against the soothsayers, and against the adulterers, and against false swearers, and against those that wrongfully keep back the hireling's wages, and vex the widow, and the fatherless, and oppress the stranger, and fear not me, saith Yahweh of hosts." (Malachi 3:5)

The Septuagint calls the first group pharmakous. Look at who's listed with them: people who cheat workers, exploit widows and orphans, and oppress the stranger. Yahweh puts sorcery and economic oppression on the same charge sheet.

Pharmakeia in the New Testament

The word family shows up five times in the New Testament, and the Geneva translates each one differently.

Galatians 5:20, a work of the flesh. "Moreover the works of the flesh are manifest, which are adultery, fornication, uncleanness, wantonness, Idolatry, witchcraft, hatred, debate, emulations, wrath, contentions, seditions, heresies" (Galatians 5:19–20). "Witchcraft" is pharmakeia, and it sits right after idolatry. Paul's warning: "they which do such things, shall not inherit the kingdom of Yahweh" (Galatians 5:21).

Revelation 9:21, the sin they won't repent of. After the trumpet plagues: "Also they repented not of their murder, and of their sorcery, neither of their fornication, nor of their theft" (Revelation 9:21). Thayer notes that some Greek manuscripts read pharmakōn here, "drugs," rather than pharmakeiōn (Thayer, G5331). Either way, the world under judgment won't give it up.

Revelation 18:23, the merchants' sorcery. This is the key verse. Revelation 18 is the fall of Babylon the great, a city defined by trade. "The merchants of the earth are waxed rich of the abundance of her pleasures" (Revelation 18:3). When she falls, "the merchants of the earth shall weep and wail over her: for no man buyeth their ware any more" (Revelation 18:11). Their cargo list runs from gold and pearls through "cinnamon, and odors, and ointments, and frankincense," and ends with "servants, and souls of men" (Revelation 18:13). Then the verdict:

"And the light of a candle shall shine no more in thee: and the voice of the bridegroom and of the bride shall be heard no more in thee: for thy merchants were the great men of the earth: and with thine enchantments were deceived all nations." (Revelation 18:23)

"Enchantments" is pharmakeia. Read the reasons in order: her merchants were the great men of the earth, and by her pharmakeia all nations were deceived. The merchants' greatness and the deceiving of the nations come in one sentence. Thayer reads the pharmakeia here "tropically, of the deceptions and seductions of idolatry." That's right, and it's also the trade of a merchant city that sells "souls of men." The next verse says "in her was found the blood of the Prophets, and of the Saints, and of all that were slain upon the earth" (Revelation 18:24).

Revelation 21:8 and 22:15, outside the city. "But the fearful and unbelieving, and the abominable and murderers, and whoremongers, and sorcerers, and idolaters, and all liars shall have their part in the lake, which burneth with fire and brimstone, which is the second death" (Revelation 21:8). The sorcerers there are pharmakois. And at the very end: "For without shall be dogs and enchanters, and whoremongers, and murderers, and idolaters, and whosoever loveth or maketh lies" (Revelation 22:15). The enchanters are pharmakoi.

From Exodus to Revelation, the pattern holds. Pharmakeia stands next to idolatry, murder, sexual sin, theft and lies. It's tied to empires (Egypt, Babylon, Nineveh, Babylon the great), to merchants and selling, and to deception. It makes people forget, and it keeps nations under a spell.

What the lexicons don't say

Be careful here. No lexicon says Paul or John meant "pharmaceutical companies." In the first century pharmakeia meant drugs, poisons, potions and spells mixed together, and the New Testament uses it for sorcery tied to idolatry. That's the meaning of the text.

The application is the question of whether the same spirit is at work today. You can't answer it from a dictionary. You answer it the way Yashua said to judge a prophet: "Ye shall know them by their fruits" (Matthew 7:16). So here's the fruit, and you can check every link.

The modern record

None of what follows is rumor. Everything below comes from the U.S. Department of Justice, the CDC, federal courts, Congress's research service, or established news and research outlets.

Criminal fines and fraud

• Pfizer, 2009: $2.3 billion. The Justice Department called it "the largest health care fraud settlement in the history of the Department of Justice." A Pfizer subsidiary pleaded guilty to a felony for misbranding the painkiller Bextra "with the intent to defraud or mislead," promoting it for uses "that the FDA specifically declined to approve due to safety concerns." The $1.195 billion criminal fine was "the largest criminal fine ever imposed in the United States for any matter." The civil part covered illegal promotion and kickbacks to doctors. The prosecutor added that "at the very same time Pfizer was in our office negotiating and resolving the allegations of criminal conduct" over another subsidiary, "Pfizer was itself in its other operations violating those very same laws" (DOJ, Sept. 2, 2009).
• GlaxoSmithKline, 2012: $3 billion. At the time it was "the largest health care fraud settlement in U.S. history and the largest payment ever by a drug company." GSK pleaded guilty over Paxil, Wellbutrin and failing to report Avandia safety data to the FDA. Prosecutors said GSK helped publish "a misleading medical journal article that misreported" that a trial showed Paxil worked for depression in children when "the study failed to demonstrate efficacy," and promoted it to doctors with "dinner programs, lunch programs, spa programs" (DOJ, July 2, 2012).
• Johnson & Johnson, 2013: more than $2.2 billion. A J&J subsidiary pleaded guilty to misbranding the antipsychotic Risperdal, which it promoted to doctors treating elderly dementia patients. The government alleged J&J marketed it "to control the behaviors and conduct of the nation's most vulnerable patients: elderly nursing home residents, children and individuals with mental disabilities." The FDA had warned that such use raised "an ethical question regarding the use of an antipsychotic medication for inappropriate behavioral control." J&J also allegedly paid kickbacks to the largest nursing-home pharmacy, whose pharmacists J&J viewed as an "extension of [J&J's] sales force" (DOJ, Nov. 4, 2013). Apart from the guilty pleas, the civil claims in these settlements were allegations without a finding of liability, as DOJ notes.

The opioid crisis

• Purdue Pharma, 2007. Purdue's affiliate pleaded guilty to misbranding OxyContin by claiming it was less addictive and less subject to abuse than other pain medications, and agreed to pay $634.5 million. Three executives pleaded guilty to misdemeanors (U.S. Attorney, W.D. Va., May 10, 2007, archived).
• Purdue Pharma, 2020–2026. Purdue pleaded guilty again in 2020, this time to three felonies, admitting it marketed opioids to prescribers it had reason to believe were diverting them and paid kickbacks (DOJ, 2020). On April 28, 2026 a federal court sentenced Purdue to a $3.544 billion criminal fine and $2 billion in forfeiture. The acting Attorney General said "Purdue Pharma put profits over patient health and safety" (DOJ, April 28, 2026). In November 2025 the bankruptcy court confirmed a plan worth at least $7.4 billion, including a roughly $6.5 billion settlement from the Sackler family who owned the company (Bankruptcy Court ruling, S.D.N.Y.; AP).
• Johnson & Johnson and the distributors, 2022. J&J agreed to pay up to $5 billion, and the three largest drug distributors up to $21 billion, in a $26 billion national opioid settlement with states and local governments (AP; Janssen settlement agreement).
• The dead. The CDC estimates 81,313 Americans died of drug overdoses in 2024, 55,296 of them involving opioids. Provisional 2025 numbers show a welcome drop, to 69,973 overdose deaths, 44,564 involving opioids (CDC/NCHS, May 13, 2026). The AP reports the opioid crisis has been linked to about 900,000 U.S. deaths since 1999 (AP). Today much of that toll comes from illicit fentanyl, not pills. But the epidemic started with a legal product sold with a lie about addiction, and the company pleaded guilty to that lie in 2007.

Talc

J&J tried to resolve tens of thousands of cancer lawsuits over its talc baby powder through a subsidiary's bankruptcy. On March 31, 2025, a federal bankruptcy judge in Texas rejected the roughly $10 billion plan and dismissed the case, citing problems with how votes were gathered (AP; Reuters). In December 2025 a jury returned a record talc verdict of about $1.5 billion against J&J. The company says its talc is safe and is appealing (Reuters, Dec. 23, 2025).

Who pays the referee

The FDA is supposed to stand between the merchants and the public. Since 1992, drug companies have paid "user fees" to fund the FDA's drug reviews, under the Prescription Drug User Fee Act (PDUFA). In fiscal 1993 those fees covered 7% of the drug-review program. In fiscal 2025 they covered 77%. Across the whole agency, industry user fees made up nearly 51% of the FDA's fiscal 2026 enacted budget (Congressional Research Service, R44750; FDA, FY2025 PDUFA Financial Report). In 2025, one drug application with clinical data cost $4,310,002 in fees (FDA PDUFA meeting slides, July 2025).

And the door spins. Science looked at 16 FDA medical reviewers who worked on 28 drug approvals and later left the agency. Eleven later worked or consulted for the companies whose drugs they had reviewed (Charles Piller, Science 361:21, 2018).

Who buys the lawmakers' time

In 2025, the pharmaceutical and health products industry spent a record $457.3 million on federal lobbying, more than any other industry and about 1.44 times the next one. More than half of its 1,917 lobbyists (51.23%) were former government employees (OpenSecrets, industry profile; OpenSecrets, top industries 2025). Its trade group PhRMA alone spent a record $38.2 million (OpenSecrets).

Who talks to you every night

"The United States and New Zealand are the only countries where drug makers are allowed to market prescription drugs directly to consumers," and the TV drug-ad boom began in 1997 when the FDA relaxed its rules (Harvard Health Publishing; New Zealand Ministry of Health literature review). Every other nation decided it wasn't safe to let the seller pitch prescription drugs straight to the sick.

Lining it up

Put the record next to Revelation 18:23. These are merchants who became "the great men of the earth," some of the largest companies in history. They're also companies that pleaded guilty to deceiving doctors and patients, that admitted lying about addiction, and that sold antipsychotics to sedate nursing-home residents. They pay much of the regulator's budget, outspend every other industry in Washington, and advertise to you directly in one of only two countries that allow it. Revelation says the nations were "deceived" by pharmakeia. The Justice Department's own word, over and over, is "misleading."

That's not proof that John had Pfizer in mind. It's a pattern Scripture taught us to recognize: Egypt's pharmakoi copying signs, Nineveh selling nations by her pharmaka, Babylon's merchants and enchanters failing to save her. Yahweh said he'd be a witness against the pharmakoi and against those who oppress for wages in the same verse (Malachi 3:5). He's still keeping that list.

The balance: Scripture is not against healing

Now the other side, which matters just as much. It would be easy to swing too far and call every doctor a sorcerer. Scripture doesn't.

Yahweh is the healer. "If thou wilt diligently hearken... unto the voice of Yahweh, and wilt do that, which is right in his sight, and wilt give ear unto his commandments, and keep all his ordinances, then will I put none of these diseases upon thee, which I brought upon the Egyptians: for I am Yahweh that healeth thee" (Exodus 15:26). Notice that the promise is tied to keeping his Law. Torah is the first health plan. David praises Yahweh "Which forgiveth all thine iniquity, and healeth all thine infirmities" (Psalms 103:3).

Physicians are honorable. Paul's companion and the writer of Luke and Acts was a doctor: "Luke the beloved physician greeteth you" (Colossians 4:14). Yashua himself said "The whole need not a Physician, but they that are sick" (Matthew 9:12) and never told anyone it was a sin to see one. The Apocrypha says it outright: "Honour a physician with the honour due unto him for the uses [which you may have] of him: For Yahweh hath created him" (Sirach 38:1), and "Yahweh hath created medicines out of the earth; And he that is wise will not abhor them" (Sirach 38:4).

Remedies are allowed. When King Hezekiah was dying, Yahweh healed him and added fifteen years to his life. Then the prophet ordered a remedy: "Then said Isaiah, Take a lump of dry figs and lay it upon the boil, and he shall recover" (Isaiah 38:21). Paul told Timothy, "Drink no longer water, but use a little wine for thy stomach's sake, and thine often infirmities" (1 Timothy 5:23). The Good Samaritan "bound up his wounds, and poured in oil and wine" (Luke 10:34). Jeremiah grieved, "Is there no balm at Gilead? is there no Physician there? Why then is not the health of the daughter of my people recovered" (Jeremiah 8:22). The balm and the physician were good things. The problem was that Israel had walked away from the One who made them work.

Even the age to come has medicine. Ezekiel saw trees by the river from the Sanctuary: "the fruit thereof shall be meat, and the leaf thereof shall be for medicine" (Ezekiel 47:12). John saw the same tree: "the leaves of the tree served to heal the nations with" (Revelation 22:2). The Greek there is not pharmakeia. It's therapeia, healing or care (Strong's G2322). Here's the contrast at the end of the Book. Babylon deceived the nations by pharmakeia (Revelation 18:23). The tree of life heals the nations with therapeia (Revelation 22:2). Yahweh isn't against medicine. He's against deception.

So where is the line?

Scripture draws it in three places.

1. Deception. Pharmakeia in Scripture deceives, and that's what Revelation 18:23 charges. When a company hides safety data, ghostwrites a misleading study, or tells you a narcotic isn't addictive, it has crossed from medicine into the old trade. The same goes for the Egyptian drug that makes you forget your grief without healing it, and Circe's drug that makes men forget home.

2. Dependence. Paul wrote, "All things are lawful unto me, but all things are not profitable. I may do all things, but I will not be brought under the power of any thing" (1 Corinthians 6:12). A medicine that heals you so you can walk on is a gift. A product built to keep you hooked and coming back, the way OxyContin was marketed, puts you under someone's power. In Revelation 18:13 the merchants' cargo ends with "souls of men."

3. Trust. This is the deepest one. King Asa fell sick in his feet, "and his disease was extreme: yet he sought not Yahweh in his disease, but to the Physicians" (2 Chronicles 16:12). Asa's sin wasn't seeing doctors. It was seeking them instead of Yahweh. King Ahaziah went further and sent to ask Baal-zebub whether he'd recover, and Elijah asked him why he would do that when Yahweh was right there in Israel (2 Kings 1:2–3). The woman in Mark 5 "had suffered many things of many physicians, and had spent all that she had, and it availed her nothing, but she became much worse" (Mark 5:26). She was healed in one touch of Yashua's garment. Jeremiah 46:11 says it to Egypt itself: "in vain shalt thou use many medicines: for thou shalt have no health." And the root of it all: "Thus saith Yahweh, Cursed be the man that trusteth in man, and maketh flesh his arm, and withdraweth his heart from Yahweh" (Jeremiah 17:5).

So a pill isn't sorcery, and a doctor isn't a sorcerer. The sorcery is a system that deceives you for money, keeps you dependent for profit, and asks you to trust the merchant more than your Maker. Yashua said "Ye cannot serve Yahweh and riches" (Matthew 6:24), and an industry built to serve riches will eventually ask you to serve it too.

What to do

• Pray first, then see the doctor. Ask Yahweh before you ask anyone else, and then use the wisdom and remedies he's given. That's Hezekiah's order of operations.
• Keep his Law. Exodus 15:26 ties health to hearing his voice. The Sabbath, the clean food laws, and rest from work were health measures long before anyone wrote a prescription.
• Ask questions. You're allowed to ask a doctor what a drug does, what it costs, who studied it, and what happens if you don't take it. Don't take a TV ad's word for it.
• Don't quit cold on your own. Some medicines are dangerous to stop suddenly. If you want off something, work with a physician you trust. Luke was one of the good ones, and there are many more.
• Get free. If you're bound to a substance, legal or not, that's not the end of your story. "If that Son therefore shall make you free, ye shall be free indeed" (John 8:36).

Babylon's merchants wept "for in one hour so great riches are come to desolation" (Revelation 18:17). Their spell doesn't last. The great men of the earth, their sorceries, and the dependence they sell are not final. The leaves of the tree of life are.

Sources

Lexicons and texts - Liddell-Scott-Jones Greek Lexicon: φάρμακον, φαρμακεία (lsj.gr) - Strong's and Thayer's, via Bible Hub: G5331 pharmakeia, G5332 pharmakeus, G5333 pharmakos, G2322 therapeia - Brown-Driver-Briggs, via Bible Hub: H3784 kashaph, H3785 kesheph - Septuagint (Greek text): Elpenor; Blue Letter Bible LXX - Homer, Odyssey, tr. Samuel Butler: Project Gutenberg - Didache ch. 2: New Advent

Court, government and research records - U.S. Department of Justice: Pfizer, 2009; GlaxoSmithKline, 2012; Johnson & Johnson, 2013; Purdue Frederick, 2007 (archived); Purdue plea, 2020; Purdue sentencing, 2026 - U.S. Bankruptcy Court, S.D.N.Y., Purdue confirmation ruling: nysb.uscourts.gov - National opioid settlement, Janssen agreement: nationalopioidsettlement.com - CDC National Center for Health Statistics, overdose deaths 2025: cdc.gov - Congressional Research Service, FDA Human Medical Product User Fee Programs (R44750): everycrsreport.com; FDA, FY2025 PDUFA Financial Report and PDUFA reauthorization slides - Charles Piller, "Is FDA's revolving door open too wide?" Science 361:21 (2018): science.org - OpenSecrets: Pharmaceuticals/Health Products lobbying, 2025; Top industries, 2025; PhRMA and TrumpRx companies - Harvard Health Publishing, "Do not get sold on drug advertising": health.harvard.edu; New Zealand Ministry of Health, DTC advertising literature review: health.govt.nz - Associated Press: Purdue/Sackler plan; $26B opioid settlement; J&J talc bankruptcy rejected - Reuters: Judge rejects J&J $10 billion plan; Record $1.5 billion talc verdict